Inside the Braves with MLB.com's Mark Bowman

Anderson injures calf again

As Brian McCann’s two-run homer cleared the right field wall in the first inning this afternoon, how many of you said, “who needs Chipper and Garret anyway?”

Obviously you probably already know that Chipper Jones and Garret Anderson were scratched from today’s lineup. Jones is dealing with a bruised left thumb that likely won’t keep him out of the lineup for more than one game.

But I’m expecting to hear the Braves announce that Anderson is going to be out a little longer with the strained right calf muscle that he aggravated before today’s game. This same ailment sidelined him for more than three weeks during Spring Training.

While I don’t know if Anderson will miss another three weeks, I think we can prepare to see Matt Diaz in left field on a regular basis.

Anderson hasn’t played more than 106 games in the outfield during any of the past five seasons and he didn’t play more than 85 games out there either of the past two seasons.

When the Braves signed Anderson in November, there was reason to question his durability. Now that he’s dealing with this calf strain that seemingly could prove to be a lingering problem, I think we should assume that he’ll once again be limited to playing 80-90 games in the outfield.Day of anniversaries: Most of you know that today is the 35th anniversary of the day Hank Aaron hit his 715th career homer. Some of you might also remember this is the 15th anniversary of Kent Mercker’s no-hitter against the Dodgers.

But how many of you remember this is the one-year anniversary of the day that Major League Baseball announced that they giving Jordan Schafer a 50-game suspension.

Obviously we’ve talked a lot about how much Schafer has matured over the course of the past year. He’s a likable kid with a bright future, who isn’t dwelling on the past.

“I didn’t even know this was the date,” Schafer said Wednesday morning. “It’s 100 percent behind me. I really don’t think about it any more.”

I was just about to say the same Mark. With the pitching we have, we only need 4 runs (of course when I say this Victorino triples). We look great and an opening week sweep would look very good right now. That would put us tied for first with the Marlins, who only scored 8 runs a game because the Nationals pitching staff is as good as middle school pitchers.

Schafer is going to get a lot of attention because he’s hit two homers. But you haven’t yet had the opportunity to truly see all of his skills. This kid is a special defensive talent. He’s so good that I was actually surprised when he didn’t catch Ryan Howard’s second-inning double or Shane Victorino’s triple. It won’t be long before you’re talking about his defense as much as you are about his offense.

Absolutely shameful job by the bullpen. If the Phillies great hitters beat you, it’s bad, but you can live with it. However, with a 7 run lead to give up that many walks, hit a batter, and generally not throw one quality pitch is inexcusable. It’s early, but this reminds me all too much of when our season really collapsed last year in a very similar fashion versus the same team.

Absolutely shameful job by the bullpen. It’s one thing if the Phillies great hitters beat you, but with a 7 run lead to have that many walks, hit batters, and general lack of anything resembling a major league caliber pitch…….horrible.

It might be tough to explain that inning. But there is no way that anybody should even attempt to make any excuses. Peter Moylan wasn’t dealing with any physical ailments. He simply was overthrowing and not allowing his ball to break..Boyer throwing one of nine pitches for strikes leads me was ridiculously inexcusable…Suddenly, I feel like I’m getting ready to write the same story that I did last July, when the Phillies claimed consecutive wins in games they were trailing by at least five runs.

When Moylan was finishing his warm-up pitches, John Sciambi commented that it was “a miracle” to have Moylan coming back, according to him, “11 months” after elbow surgery. I’ve always heard it takes a minimum of 12 months to even start coming back, and a total of 18 months before a pitcher feels fully recovered and ready to let loose like the old days. In short, he ain’t ready yet, and it was painfully obvious that he was afraid to let it rip, thus the sidearm sinker flattened out in the zone, when it wasn’t missing the zone entirely. He only had one pitch reach 90 mph, all the others were around 86-89; he used to hit 93-94 mph, and I believe he will again, but he’s coming back too soon. The Braves, I think, have erred on the side in believing that such a miracle could happen, when all other experience points to the contrary. I can see why the Braves thought it would be a good idea to let him come in to a relatively low-pressure situation (the game was not yet completely out of hand when he came in), but he was left in long after everyone from Philly to the ATL could see he couldn’t get the job done, and the dominoes just continued to fall thereafter. I believe the law of baseball inertia states that bullpens in meltdown will continue to remain in meltdown until acted upon by an outside force–a manager. I rarely am willing to second-guess Cox, and certainly won’t claim to know all the factors involved in today’s fiasco, but it seems to me that once Moylan poured gas on the fire, Bennett should’ve been the go-to guy before Boyer. Regardless, I hope they all got it out of their systems now, and the remainder of the season they show why they’ve been entrusted with major-league roster spots. Considering that the Rangers just signed Jeff Zimmerman (yes, THAT Jeff Zimmerman, who hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2001), I don’t know if any of those guys should feel to confident about holding on to their jobs.

In your explanation of yesterday’s meltdown, please refrain from using terms like “no lead is safe in this place”, “My mechanics were not right and I was flying open”, and “it was too cold for me to get a feel for the baseball.”
We would appreciate it if you instead said things like “that was unacceptable”, “I accept complete responsibility”, “I messed up and it’s all on my shoulders”, and “I should trust my starting pitchers”, “I haven’t thrown 1 strike per 9 pitches since Little League.”

In one day you took us from top of the world, to the shame of the league. Reality has set in. In a division that will be decided by probably no more than one or two games when this is all said and done, we hope and pray that we don’t turn back to this game as what cost us the season.

In your explanation of yesterday’s meltdown, please refrain from using terms like “no lead is safe in this place”, “My mechanics were not right and I was flying open”, and “it was too cold for me to get a feel for the baseball.”
We would appreciate it if you instead said things like “that was unacceptable”, “I accept complete responsibility”, “I messed up and it’s all on my shoulders”, and “I should trust my starting pitchers”, “I haven’t thrown 1 strike per 9 pitches since Little League.”

In one day you took us from top of the world, to the shame of the league. Reality has set in. In a division that will be decided by probably no more than one or two games when this is all said and done, we hope and pray that we don’t turn back to this game as what cost us the season.

Well said Bravo. I left the game somewhere in the 7th we were up 10-3. I left as Skip Carey used to say, “to go walk the dog.” I was shocked when at Midnight, I saw the score.

I was shocked even more to learn that the Phils did not hit their way to the victory, but that our MAJOR LEAGUE pitchers could not throw the baseball over the @#$% plate.

I have coached little league baseball, and umpired at that level and I can tell you, I don’t think I have seen a game where a team walked in 4 runs in one inning.

We tied the ML record for that. GREAT. I was shocked to learn that it had actually happened before.

As good as I was feeling about the team through the 7th inning yesterday, I feel twice as bad about it today, because I know enough to know that we were undressed and exposed. And I feel cheap and dirty because we “exposed” ourselves.

We cannot submit our starting pitchers to that kind of abuse. We cannot be forced to score more than 5 or 6 runs a game if we are going to compete. If this team scores 5 or 6 runs it should win.

I am hoping that yesterday’s meltdown was a fluke of baseball. But if these bullpen guys give that kind of performance again, they should be gone. There are too many good arms in Gwinnett. And Bravo, I am with you – they should get ready fast.

I liked Diaz’s take on this. We swept them in 2007 and they won the division, so I’ll choose to be superstitious here and say that it’s for the better.

I fully anticipated the Phils would win at least one game out of this series, but up until the 7th inning, I figured that was a moot point.

Hind sight is 20/20. O’Flaherty got Utley out, then was ahead 0-2 when he grazed Howard and got yanked. Maybe that shouldn’t have happened. I read the story on MLB.com last night when there were 197 fan comments and only read maybe 20% of them and they all pretty much mirrored what I’m reading here.

Yes it was a downright embarassing loss. Yes, there’s no excuse for us to lose a game in this manner. Yes, we should have won the game, it was in the bag basically.

But, you know what? Life goes on. Our team had a bad game. It’s going to happen. Hopefully nowhere near as embarassing as this one is (trust me, I had to eat some serious crow with coworkers this morning), but we’ve got a home series against one of the perennially worst teams in the league. The Braves can either say “Woe is me” and screw up this next series too and end up like last year, or learn from their mistakes and pick it back up and exit this 6 game homestand at 7-2, like I’m fairly confident they’re capable of. They need our support too. I’m sure they’ve beat themselves up enough about yesterday. I’m sure the guys that had no control over it have given them a ration of crap over it, too. Let’s move on and support our team like only we can do and give them the support they need to move on and continue to make this a winning season.

I agree with you 100 percent asphaltcowboy… but I also agree with Bravo in that I want this team to show that yesterdays loss matters to them. The best way to do that is take what happened, get ********** about it and take it out on the Nationals. There is no time nor room for sulking. Man up and do it all again on Friday. Yesterday’s game may be a pivotal game in the season. Let’s make it a positive one.

Anybody who watched that inning and doesn’t think baseball is played equally between the ears and between the lines wasn’t watching closely. It is truly amazing what can happen.

I watched the game on television and the Gameday o my computer. That umpire was STRUGGGGGLING. At least a third of the pitches from the third inning on were basically called wrong. After the leadoff double when Kelly got rung up on a pitch almost a foot outside I started to watch closer on the computer. I saw balls in the box and strikes out of it in the same at bats. The ump basically set things up for the perfect storm that followed. He will not be graded well for that game.

That being said, when you’re up 7 in the 7th, throw it down the middle for goodness sake. That is no time for nibbling.

Yeah, the ump had a terrible game. I actually think that with the way was he was calling the game, Campillo’s walk should have been called a strike. Not to mention he blew that call on Kotchman’s pop up that popped out of the catcher’s glove and bounced off of the screen. That inning truly was a phenomenon. 4 singles and 8 runs. Amazing. Hand it to the Phils. They kept their bats on their shoulders.
The more I’ve had time to think about it, the more I hope that IF we miss the playoffs, I pray that it’s by more than one game because this one is going to sit with me all season long!

The Gimpy Garret Anderson (MISSED) ******** 3 ******** …….. FOUL BALLS (AND IF WE WERE NOT AT “TURNER FIELD” {home-field scoring}…… GARRET COULD HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH…. ***** 3 ERRORS!!!!! *****. EVERYONE is forgetting to mention the first ball that Garret missed because he ***(WAS TOO LAZY)*** to call off a fan who was leaning over the stands, trying to catch a foul ball!!!!!!!!! Any other LEFT FIELDER IN BASEBALL would have caught that ball also!!! Garret could have been charged with…… 3 ERRORS during this single game!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, the GIMPY GARRET *****COMPLETELY BUTCHERED***** that ball bouncing around in the corner!! On that play (GARRET ANDERSON LOOKED LIKE A ***RABID CHICKEN WITH HIS HEAD CUT OFF*** !!! GARRET ANDERSON….. you are no longer wanted in Atlanta.

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